Yeah, not impressed with the new homescreen. It's cluttered and now takes one more click to access everything in 'settings'. The main carosel should be (and always should have been, IMO) the shortlist. Having two carosels is pointless. Using up my bandwidth to advertise books to me is worse than pointless.

If I encounter any bugs in this FW at all I will be reverting to 1.9.14

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If you wanted to...how does one revert back to 1.9.14? By having to do a factory reset?

You do know that one of the choices in that bar at the bottom is the shortlist, right?

The shortlist is what came up when we updated my husband's KT. I thankfully did not see any book recommendations at all. I have not bought very many kobo books, and his KT is still using my personal account, so he didn't get any of that.

I was a little worried at the "recommended" being a euphemism for "advertising", but thankfully have not seen that in his KT yet.

How do you establish a Shortist? I would prefer that to having previews grouped in with my library but didn't know another way to keep a wish list. My new desktop options just include Recommendations, Featured and New Releases.

I don't mind the storefront look so much on the Kobo Desktop, especially if I could use it to follow the prices and keep track of books on my wish list. However, from what I've read, I really don't think I'd like the new homepages on the Touch.

If I keep my device on Airplane Mode, will that prevent this new version from loading? Version .14 downloaded just recently when I turned the wireless on and I'm quite happy with it.

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You establish a Short List by pressing on the heart shaped icons to the left of the book(s) until they go dark and thereby highlight. It is those books that you darken the hearts, that become your short list. I use my short list to bring up all the purchased Kobo books I have on the reader. Keeping them grouped like that---makes for a fast change up.

Yeah, not impressed with the new homescreen. It's cluttered and now takes one more click to access everything in 'settings'. The main carosel should be (and always should have been, IMO) the shortlist. Having two carosels is pointless. Using up my bandwidth to advertise books to me is worse than pointless.

If I encounter any bugs in this FW at all I will be reverting to 1.9.14

How does one revert back? I haven't been able to find an online copy of the 1.9.14 firmware like you could before, and the "double press" menu bug I reported a few posts above is driving me nuts.

Not happy that I can't get to my shortlist straight away from the main menu like I could in 1.9.14.

I really don't like that bar at the bottom either. I really want an option to remove it.

Actually you can get to it even faster: set your bottom carousel to "shortlist" (it should stay even when you go to other pages, turn off the Kobo, go into a book etc -- if it doesn't downgrade to 1.9.14 and reinstall the 1.9.16) and on the right hand side there is a button called "SHOW ALL" and it will instantly open your shortlist.

Taming and Reader Paradice, thanks for explaining what the Shortlist is.

Previously, when I went to the home page on my device, a screen with five books purchased from Kobo appeared briefly then changed to a screen of five books I was actually reading or had opened. Now that I know what those hearts are for and have blackened the ones for books I am reading or plan to read soon, I have just one home screen.

I thought the Shortlist was on the new Desktop, as an alternative to the Recommended, Featured and New Releases on the right side of the screen. I think it would be very useful if Kobo included a option here so that people could assemble a Wish List as well.

Shows up across the bottom of the homepage. You can change it to only ever show your shortlist instead so you don't have to ever see the recommendations.

Of course, odds are that it won't stop the device phoning home to tell them what you've got so that they can update their recommended lists for you, even if you don't see them (and if you use the desktop, you can't turn 'em off). Worse, it's sending info off to Google Analytics when it does. The only way to go is revert to 1.9.14 and never connect your Kobo to the desktop software or allow it out of airplane mode...

What's this "recommended" crap?! I didn't buy the "with offers" version of the kobo. If they start forcing advertisements on me I'll be the first to switch to kindle or sony.

I see a big difference between Kobo telling me about books they sell that I might actually be interested in and ads for toothpaste, tube socks, and blue jeans--but that's me. Ultimately, I decided (after really blowing off some steam that sounded very much like yours in the beta group) that if the recommendations morphed into something that seemed closely aligned with my actual interests and I had the option to display the shortlist and not see anything else, I could live with it.

It took me awhile, btw, and what sealed it for me was seeing the recommendations get better and the ability to have the shortlist persistent.

The recommendations are forced to appear on my Android phone and 5 of the books listed are already in my library. It's useless and I don't need them nosing around in my books to tell me what I might like. I have a feeling they're snooping at non-kobo books as well.